How Apple Blew the Announcement of the iPad

Unless you've been living under a rock, and let's face it, there's likely internet access and 3G coverage underneath rocks these days, you know Steve Jobs marched up in front of a salivating crowd in dramatic fashion - as we've come to expect from the fearless leader of the Apple cult.. er, company - and unveiled the iPad, the long awaited, and even longer rumoured tablet computer.

It was touted to be a replacement for netbook computers... It's not. That's not the problem, though.

What may surprise you is that the problem is also not the lack of a camera, expandable memory, USB slots, SD card slot, Flash support in Safari, multitasking, HDMI out, AVI support for movies, or a stylus.

No, those things are only a byproduct of the real problem. The real problem is outlined in the photo below:

It's the hype.

It's also massive secrecy prior to the unveiling. It's allowing us geeks to let our imaginations run wild because Apple wants the iPad to be all things to all people.

Apple's marketing team are made up of geniuses. The huge stage, the clear outlining of features, the emphasis on simplicity - it's what's sold people on the iPhone, even though you couldn't copy and paste text. That small drawback was forgivable, because the iPhone has so much going for it, and is useful to such a large segment of the population. In short, the iPhone broke new ground and set the bar for what smartphones could achieve.

The iPad? Not so much. Without retaining any humility in who Apple thinks could really benefit from the iPad, the people who got the most excited over this were us technophiles. We wanted the features we were seeing on netbooks, and pushed for the juggernaut that is Jobs and company to deliver. What Apple _should_ have said right from the get-go was that they had a new device for soccer moms.

The iPad is more or less a simple browsing device that can play some videos, let you do a bit of emailing, read a book, and if you dare, make a call.

That's about it. It's for your aunt who is tired of her Windows PC popping up spyware ads for spiky dildos when she's just trying to get her mail and read up on the news.

It's for the businessman who needs to show a slide presentation, open a few websites on the go and read over today's meeting notes.

In other words, the iPad is for the casual user, and for these purposes it works damn well. The problem is Apple couldn't come right out and admit that, and now look a tad foolish for raising such a big stink about this thing.

With expectations at such a fever pitch, and with Steve Jobs standing in front of a screen twelve times the size of God to unveil the next great innovation, you'd better bring all the goods or you're getting panned.

It didn't have to be that way. If we knew who this device was for before it was released, it'd have gotten a pass. Instead, we've got the very customer base who could use this device for some convenient, time saving applications, getting trickled down jokes from us geeks comparing it to a tampon.

So, little favour Steve: it's time to stop acting like you need every person on the planet to buy every product you put out - you're worth $50 billion now, it’s okay to dial down the hype a notch when you put out a niche product. Relax... and give us geeks the goods in iPad Gen2, and maybe we’ll spread the good word again.